Bloomberg bolsters oversight in wake of terminal scandal

Bloomberg News is creating the positions of standards editor and independent senior editor as part of changes stemming from snooping by journalists of client data on the company's computer terminals.

The new positions were announced Wednesday as part of a report by an external investigation that found evidence of only one instance of a journalist using sensitive client data in a news story. It said the affected client is aware of this situation.

The scandal surfaced in May. The company acknowledged at the time that at least one reporter had gained access to information on Goldman Sachs after the bank complained to the company in April.

Discussing the legal obligations of data mining, with Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Yale School of Management; and Joel Reidenberg, Fordam University professor.
(Disclosure: Bloomberg is a competitor of CNBC in reporting and distributing business news on the Web and on television.)

Later, Matthew Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, apologized and acknowledged that the practice of allowing reporters access to limited subscriber information, such as when they logged onto the terminal dated to the start of Bloomberg News.

The review led by the law firm Hogan Lovells and Promotory Financial Group investigated more than 500,000 news stories, interviewed 425 employees, and studied internal policy manuals and training guides. It concluded that Bloomberg has appropriate client data policies in place.

"We know we needed to evolve, and we have learned from our mistakes," CEO and President Daniel L. Doctoroff said in a statement. "We are already implementing many of the recommendations we received."

The recommendations for a standards editors and independent senior editor were among those made by Clark Hoyt, previously Bloomberg editor-at-large and a former public editor of The New York Times.

The standards editor will be responsible for for making sure that the news operation consistently adheres to high standards for accuracy, balance and tone. The independent senior editor will be an outside avenue for complaints about news coverage.

—By Marty Steinberg, CNBC.com

(Disclosure: Bloomberg is a competitor of CNBC in reporting and distributing business news on the Web and on television.)